Prickly City - 4.12.2007 - 4.13.2007

” It’s hard to embrace something when you don’t know where it stands.” I would say that is a true statement, but I don’t understand why it would be applicable in this context. Why would anyone want to embrace a specific political ideology (like ‘Republican’ or Democrat’) as opposed to having their own ideology based on careful study of facts and opinions.

It seems as though the character in the first strip has already made up her mind that she will stand for whatever it is the Republicans stand for, and she’s slightly dismayed that she can’t figure out exactly what that is. What’s crazy it that it seems that a huge portion of Americans think like this, both Democrat and Republican. They decide what political ideology to subscribe to, and then look to political leaders to tell them what to believe.

Are we that uninformed that we need people to tell us what we should and shouldn’t believe in? If we all truly made a concerted effort to look at various issues from all sides, and used logic and reason to determine the best point of view, I think we’d find that we all have a lot more in common than we think. Instead, we allow the media, political pundits, cable news windbags, and scheming politicians to define our beliefs.

Candidates from the same parties don’t always agree on various issues. Political pundits generally say this makes a party “weak”, and maybe they’re right, but as I said in January, there are far more than two “sides” to any given issue, and allowing politicians to define for use two nicely packaged positions, and given a choice between the two does no one any favors. The only ones that benefit from this watering down of complex issues are the politicians themselves, who now find it easy to rally the troops behind them under one banner.

Political parties (and party loyalty) will be the downfall of this country. The two parties take every issue, divide it into “sides”, and then choose one to defend. In many cases, the two sides aren’t really that different, but the politicians will have you believe that you’re looking at night and day when you compare the two. If the parties seem to agree on a hot topic, they are no longer well-defined, and therefore voters may lose their loyalty to one side. As such, they make a point to disagree about every single thing.

When two parties disagree about nearly every issue, just for the sake of disagreement, it polarizes the public, and allows no beneficial work to actually get done. Every vote, every speech, every single thing the politician does is for the sake of political posturing to help him get elected the next term, or help his party. It disgusts me, and I don’t understand why more people don’t share my sentiment.

So that’s my rant. I encourage you all to disassociate yourself from a specific political party, think logically and rationally about hot-button issues, and really look into every candidate in an election before deciding who to vote for. You may be surprised to find that a 3rd-party candidate holds views much more similar to yours than a Democrat or Republican. Above all, don’t allow partisan politics to continue to define who you are and what you stand for.

Thank you and goodnight.

Family Circus - 3.26.07

Mallard Fillmore - 3.23.07

Prickly City - 3.23.07

Non Sequitur - 3.24.07

Global Warming seems to be the Topic of the Week, as several comics have mentioned it in just the past few days. Billy from Family Circus is even cheering on it’s arrival. Hooray for Global Warming!

It seems everyone has an opinion on Global Warming, and unfortunately, that opinion is often stoked by politicians and other blowhards in the public eye. Research shows pretty definitively that average global temperatures have risen over the past several decades. Many scientists postulate that the reason for this increase invoves man’s presence on earth, and several things we’ve created, gasses we’ve emitted, etc.

Others stand by the hypothesis that the fluctuations in temperature are simply a normal variant in temperature, and are nothing to worry about. They think that in the millions of years since earth was created, a sample size of less than a few hundred years of any data and only a century of hard data is hardly sufficient to make an accurate assessment.

The fact that just 35 years ago, scientists and the media were predicting a new Ice Age says alot about the kind of assessment that can be made with such a small sample of data. Being the shameless sensaltionalists that they are, the media will take every opportunity to blow anything out of proportion, just so they can improve their ratings.

Looking at the problem objectively, either hypothesis could be correct. It’s absolutely true that the sample size we have to work with is far too small to make any definiteve judgements. Still, we are watching the average temperature increase before our eyes, and it’s not a terrible idea to be on the alert and perhaps alter some of our human practices just in case.

The real problem in the Global Warming debate, as well as most other political hot buttons comes down to the politicians. The best way for a politician to gain support for himself or his party is to get the public riled up about a specifc issue. Scaring the America public is even more effective, and both Republicans and Democrats are using these tactics quite often to gain support.

The Republicans have scared everyone about terrorists ending the world as we know it to promote their agendas. Now, the Democrats are scaring everyone about global warming ending the world as we know it. Both of these issues are potential problems, and both are issues that Americans should be concerned about, but instead of making a concerted effort to solve the problems, politicians are doing nothing more than scaring the public, and proposing a ’solution’ that will do very little to correct the actual problem. Now, the politician looks like the good guy, when he or she has actually impeded progress towards actually solving the problem at hand.

Does this sound familiar? The Republicans did it with the war on terror, the Democrats did it with global warming. Both parties have used the same tactic on countless other issues, and the result is always the same. The public is polarized into two camps, politicans get face time on television, and the issue is never actually solved. This happens time and time again.

So what do you think? Is Global Warming a real problem? Should we be devoting all of our recources to solving it, or just try to change our act a bit to stem any potential future problems? Or should we just not worry about it at all? Do you think politicians are to blame for making it a bigger deal than it really is, or are they the only ones really working to solve the problem?

Let me know what you think.